Sisyphus Shrugged

06:05 pm July 18th, 2007




			Sisyphus Shrugged - oy. Lasciate ogni speranza and put your feet up.

jmhm


	oy.
	There was just an explosion near Grand Central, two blocks from my office. Life is just too damn exciting sometimes. edit: OK, more news: it was apparently a transformer on 41st and Lex. This is not all that surprising. We've had severe flooding conditions in various parts of the system all day, and a number of train lines were recently turned back on. edit: Here we go. more. edit: Oh, for crying out loud. Despite what you may have been reading, with the exception of a few drama queens getting their fifteen minutes from credulous reporters, there is no panic. Out in front of the building right now, the biggest problem they're having is keeping the ghouls with cell phone cameras out of oncoming traffic.

ahhhs. -- hmmm?


	Comments

	From: mearagrrl	Date: July 18th, 2007 10:14 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Good lord. I hope this was something tiny and acccidental. I can't find it on any news things yet.

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	From: jmhm	Date: July 18th, 2007 10:16 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

HM saw it on the news. Apparently something under the street blew up. We've had severe flooding all day, so most likely it was something electrical.

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	From: jawsoflife	Date: July 19th, 2007 12:59 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Explosion is usually a good reason to panic, though.

I was on a call with a guy from our New York office at the time, and he described a lot of smoke and people sprinting up 42nd and 43rd streets, which seemed like cause for concern (being dryly British, of course, he said that if anything happens, let it be known that they're billing hours to the bitter end). Even nestled here in the flyover parts, I was kind of nervous until I caught a radio news report.

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	From: jmhm	Date: July 19th, 2007 04:35 am (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Explosion is usually a good reason to panic, though.

Eh. The people at Grand Central, from what I can tell, didn't handle it very well - when you're evacuating large crowds, the word "yell" shouldn't really enter into it - and people who see people running will get nervous.

All I know is that five minutes later the streets were filled with perfectly calm people rubbernecking.

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From: klhoughton	Date: July 20th, 2007 06:06 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
Re: Explosion is usually a good reason to panic, though.

What Julia Said. I saw an order of magnitude or so more people standing on Park Avenue pointing cameras at the smoke than anyone who could be described as "panicked" (a few runners, yes, but most of those were coming from Lexington Avenue--that is, getting away from the explosion itself).

And, two days later, 101 Park is still closed.

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	From: jmhm	Date: July 20th, 2007 08:40 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)
	Re: Explosion is usually a good reason to panic, though.

I know some people whose offices back onto 41st, and they didn't have a pleasant time evacuating, but as near as I can tell most of people were just really, really annoyed that they were going to have just as dreadful a time getting home as the floods gave them in the morning.

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	From: elaynetoo	Date: July 19th, 2007 12:50 pm (UTC)		(linkie thing)

Well, I'm just glad you're okay. Bryan said in my comments section, "We used to run into this on the campus I taught at in upstate New York after a really heavy thunderstorm. It would soak the insulation around the steam line and there would be an 'explosion' of steam that shot manhole covers into the air, and once penetrated the 4 Kilovolt power line in the same tunnel." I don't doubt yesterday's torrential rains had something to do with the steam line around you.

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